


Little Talks

by corgasbord



Category: Dangan Ronpa, Dangan Ronpa - All Media Types
Genre: F/M, Fluff, but mostly disgustingly shameless fluff, contains spoilers, some angst too
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-07
Updated: 2016-10-07
Packaged: 2018-08-20 00:14:06
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,494
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8229613
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/corgasbord/pseuds/corgasbord
Summary: Kyouko doesn't usually have much to say, but Makoto makes her feel comfortable enough that she can talk about anything - even the one thing she's never told anybody else.(Takes place in canon, post-DR3.)





	

**Author's Note:**

> it's kirigiri's birthday so i decided to procrastinate all of my other work to write this lmao

Kyouko Kirigiri is a quiet person, and the countless months that Makoto has spent growing closer to her have done nothing to change that. They have, however, made the silence more comfortable. He’s come to understand that she’s not shy, and certainly not soft-spoken; rather, she only speaks when she feels that words are necessary.

She communicates the most sentiment to Makoto through her hands. There’s a story seared into them, one that he’s never heard, but doesn’t need to in order to understand what she’s conveying whenever she takes her gloves off in front of him. More often than not, one of his hands will find hers, neatly fitting their fingers together. It’s a gesture of affirmation as much as it is one of affection. He needs her to know how much her trust means to him, and he can tell that she understands whenever she squeezes his hand back.

Right now they’re laying in her bed together with only their breathing to fill the silence, and Kyouko’s eyes are fixed on the ceiling as though the answers to all of her questions are written on it. Makoto searches with her for a while, picking apart the patterns in the plaster without even knowing what he’s trying to find, before deciding that the effort is futile and turning onto his side to look at her instead. His gaze intermittently flicks down to where their hands are joined, but he tries to keep it on her face more, so as not to make her self-conscious.

She normally doesn’t mind letting him stare at her like the lovesick puppy he is, and sometimes she’ll stare back, almost smiling. But this time, she casts him a glance out of the corner of her eye, then refocuses on the ceiling.

Makoto likes to believe that he’s gotten better at reading her, but he knows that it’s mostly because she’s relaxed enough around him to let her guard down. He can still never tell exactly what’s on her mind unless she lets him know, verbally or not. At the moment, he’s tempted to ask, but he keeps his mouth shut, afraid to disrupt the quiet.

Instead, his eyes absentmindedly fall to her hand again as he idly runs his thumb over the back of it. Without even looking at him, she notices and decides to finally speak up.

“You’re still wondering what happened.”

That makes Makoto’s head snap up in surprise. It’s not a question. It’s a statement made with absolute certainty, because she knows him better than he knows himself.

“No!” he stammers hastily, because he doesn’t want to pry. When Kyouko looks over at him with one eyebrow raised dubiously, though, he corrects himself. “I mean- of course I’m curious, but you don’t have to tell me.”

“I know I don’t. But you do want to know. Am I wrong?” When Makoto hesitates, she continues, “A simple ‘yes’ or ‘no’ will suffice.”

“Yes- I mean, no, you’re not wrong, I do.” There’s another pause as Makoto struggles to find the right words to handle the topic with the sensitivity it deserves.

Kyouko stops him before he can continue, though. “All right. I’ll tell you, then.”

Makoto blinks, stunned by how easily she agreed. “Wait, really? Are you sure? You don’t-”

“Like I said, I’m perfectly aware that I don’t have to,” she says, stopping him before he repeats himself. “I wouldn’t bring it up without being prepared to talk about it.”

She’s right, and Makoto knows that she is. He can see the resolve in her eyes, feel it in the way she tightens her grip on his hand ever so slightly. “... Right. Okay.” He gives her a serious nod, taking a deep breath as though to brace himself for what he’s about to hear.

She remains equally serious. It makes sense; the story that she relates is not a happy one, and Makoto had known that much from the beginning. She tells him about someone that she cared for so much that she’s still able to blame herself for the misplacement of her trust, rather than believing her condition to be entirely that person’s fault.

Makoto listens intently, doing his best to police the severity of his reactions. He often has to bite his tongue to keep from interjecting just to validate her, because the last thing he wants to do is appear patronizing. Instead, he watches her, careful to show that he’s paying attention. He picks up on the subtle furrowing of her brow and the increased torsion in her jaw, and for a moment he thinks he can almost catch a glimpse of the pain ingrained in her memory of the injury.

“The hardest part of that experience wasn’t getting the burns, or the recovery period afterwards,” she muses, her tone still strangely calm. “It wasn’t even my grandfather telling me that I’d been a fool. It was realizing that he was right- I was a fool for prioritizing a personal attachment over my work.”

At that point, she closes her eyes and goes quiet for several long moments. He continues to caress her scarred-over knuckles with his thumb, thinking hard about how to respond to that, or if he should even say anything at all.

He doesn’t feel like he can let stifling silence reign after all of that, though, so he finally gives her the only words of comfort he can think to offer: “I don’t think you’re a fool for that, Kyouko. There’s nothing wrong with wanting to maintain close bonds with people.”

A genuine smile turns the corners of her mouth up. “I figured you’d say something like that,” she replies, her tone fondly amused. Then her features settle back into that serious expression, and her silence makes him wonder if she’s gotten lost in thought again.

But she shifts to lay on her side suddenly, fixing him with an intense stare. “Do you know why I decided to tell you all of that?”

Makoto nods, immediately assuming the obvious. “It’s because you trust me, right?”

“Well, yes, that _is_ part of it.” Kyouko can’t deny him that much. “But there’s more to it than just that. Otherwise I would still be wearing my gloves, and we wouldn’t be laying here like this in the first place.”

Makoto has to stop and consider that for a minute. Then, he remembers what she told him a long time ago about her gloves, before they had even escaped Hope's Peak: under ordinary circumstances, no one but her family sees what's beneath them. Her meaning dawns on him, and the weight of the realization makes his breath catch. “You mean… you think of me as family.”

“Precisely.” She still hasn’t taken her eyes off of him, and if she were anyone else he’d probably be unnerved by that. “In fact, I’d even go so far as to say that you’re the only family I have left.”

“Kyouko…” he murmurs, his voice saturated with emotion. He isn’t quite sure how he should react to that. He wants to feel bad for her, but he’s long since learned that she can’t stand being pitied, so she surely wouldn’t have made such a statement in order to gain sympathy from him.

She picks up on his internal conflict all too easily. “I don’t want you to feel sad about that,” she tells him, giving his hand another firm squeeze. “I just feel like you deserve to know how important you are to me.”

At that, Makoto sucks in a deep and shaky breath. He hadn’t even known that he could feel so much for one person, but in spite of the ache in his chest he manages to give her a wavering smile. There’s a kind of reverence in the way he moves to clasp her hand between both of his, so unspeakably _grateful_ that after all they’ve been through, she’s still there with him. “Thank you,” he says, feeling like he has to let her know that somehow.

She finally breaks eye contact, glancing down to see the way his hands have enveloped hers. There’s a small smile on her face now, one that makes his heart beat just a bit faster. “You don’t need to thank me for that. The fact that you listened is enough,” she insists, bringing her own free hand up to place it over one of his.

“Of course I listened. I want to be here for you.” He wishes that he could properly verbalize an “I love you,” but the words get stuck in his throat, so he conveys it instead by lifting her hands so that he can kiss the backs of them.

She’s lapsed back into silence, but words are obsolete, anyway. When she leans in close enough to rest her forehead against his and grips his hands like they’re all that’s keeping her grounded, it’s enough for him to know that she feels the same.

**Author's Note:**

> ok so i'd just like to say i'm actually angry that there's no detailed explanation in canon for why kirigiri's hands are burned but i didn't want to make one up so you all get to deal with ambiguity, sorry


End file.
